Category: Intaweb

So, today is my fifth anniversary of using Last.fm, the radio and music scrobbling website.

Although I very seldom listen to the radio part of Last.fm I am someone who scrobbles the music that they are listening to. Primarily from my mobile phone but also from my work and home computers sometimes too.

I signed up on March 31st 2006 and have to date scrobbled 9788 tracks. It’s a shame I’ve not broken the 10,000 barrier as that would have been fitting, but oh well.

It’s interesting to see what you listen to, for instance, my top 10 most listened to artists over the last five years are;

Also, I pull in the list of most recently listened to tracks into the very blog, over on the right hand side under “lpb’s recent tunes”, so if you’re really interested, you can keep an eye on what I’ve been listening to. It’s kinda pointless, but then again, most of this blog is!!

To be honest, I can’t remember where I first heard of / saw Minecraft – it might have been Kevin’s YouTube channel actually (i’m a fan of his “How to annoy people on Call of Duty series”), but after an initial attempt to not be interested in it, Minecraft sucked me in and I had to take a look.

Minecraft is an ‘Indie’ game, developed by Markus Persson (aka @notch). It’s been under development since about May 10, 2009. You can find out more about it on it’s website, here. It’s still in beta, which means it’s not finished, but it also means that it’s currently available to buy at a discount of 25% off, making it just €14.95 (about £12).

That was just too tempting for me, so i took the plunge.

Oh My God (OMG).

It’s so bloody addictive it’s ridiculous. For a game that’s essentially about mining resources and building stuff (anything you want) out of said resources, it’s just so addictive. That’s not all there is to it, there’s the exploration element as you wander the (deliberately) blocky landscape or delve into seemingly never ending subterranean cavern systems as well as the survival element (don’t find yourself outside at night! – to quote Newt from Aliens “They come mostly at night. Mostly”).

The randomly generated worlds are big, according to Notch they’re about 8 times the surface area of the Earth! That’s a lot to explore, an aweful lot.

It’s also multiplayer! I’ve not really tried this aspect of it out yet, have been far too busy with my singleplayer game – gotta dig those ores and build mah house!

Simply, if you like, big open-ended sandbox games – give this a spin – it’s only £12 quid!